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Suggestion For Format of Page

I have a suggestion for revising the format of the forum pages. As it is, I often find myself scrolling horizontally to read posts because someone has posted a large image or a long URL. It seems to me that if the items in the left-hand column (Front Door, Discussion, Interviews,...) were placed in a horizontal line, possibly below the orange bar, the entire left column space could be used for the forum text and the instances where we have to scroll the pages horizontally would be reduced.

This topic just got revived because there is now an ad down the right-hand column. Do you think we could lose that one ? This ad (jobs etc. one) could easily be done in a horizontal format like all of the other ads here.

I hope you realize that before you offer any suggestions on improving the site that they will most likely be ignored.

Some of those members that you see in this post have gone to other boards and parts unknown. We had a fairly stable ot forum going when TN was the moderator, but some guy named Housen came in and started telling us what we could say and not say. He was going on and on about how we could replace our naughty words with nice clean ones. So what if someone slipped a PG-13 word into a post? Big deal. He then wanted us to keep all posts at the level that a 5 year old would not be offended by. Those were the early days of when he first got here. Many old timers were not happy.

Frankly, I don't see any improvements here. An older version of UBB is here and half the time the page wont update after I post. I can't use IE5, 5.5 or 6 to view HWC. I use Mozilla to get it to update. There is more advertising but fewer people. I guess the idea is to make the ads so big that's all people see. What I see is a website that is having major problems trying to make it and can't understand why.

I don't harbor any ill will towards HWC, but I only visit here once in a while instead of two hours a day like before.

Thanks for dropping by, s4; since HwC is "struggling to make it" we're grateful for your page views.

For the record, as you know, it was me, not Housen, who decided to shut down the trash-talking OT forum, and I haven't regretted it even though, you're right, the -- what? 30? 50? -- members who viewed it as their private club no longer spend hours a day flaming there. Housen is currently making plans to not update but replace UBB with superior software, although I admit in today's tough economy that won't make the ads go away -- it's CDW.com this morning, yep, the HwC audience is so reduced and so many sites are virtually giving away space that there's a steady stream of vendors lining up to buy ads at internet.com's pre-slump, non-discounted rates. And I view HwC with IE 5 and 5.5 on my two PCs (haven't tried IE 6 yet) all day, every day with no problems.

I confess management has postponed some of my unlimited-budget improvement plans, but HwC is here to stay, and real feedback and suggestions are and always will be heard.

First, I am not referring to the matter of you shutting down the ot forum. I am referring to what Housen did shortly after he first got hired by Internet.com. He gave us members a pep talk about cleaning up our act. There wasn't a whole lot of the trash talking going on like there was when you came to the website. It gradually got worse and worse. I did not have problem with the ot forum being removed.

I was only saying that giving a little freedom of expression wouldn't hurt. For example when Mark came here to tell us about the beginnings of HWC. That would of made a great human interest story that you could have used positively to promote the site.

As for my problem of not being able to get the pages to update, I've tried everything using IE. I am not convinced of what the problem is. All I know is that if I use Mozilla to reload the page it will work after I post. It will not refresh with IE no matter if I clear my temporary internet files or even close the browser and restart. I have tried all the settings in the options.

Don't get me wrong Eric. I am not a defender of the flaming and trashing talking ot forum. In the 3000+ posts that I've had, no one has ever told me one of my posts was offensive or that I should be given the boot.

I am glad to hear that you are looking into replacing the UBB forum because it's long overdue. There are many boards out there with cool new features that don't cost as much as UBB and look better. Take VBulletin for example. I don't know that VB could support as many members that HWC has or had.